This article also says that some of the major brands add sugar to enhance the flavor, smell, and chemical reaction. Therefore making it more appealing to....teens. How nice of them.
"New research, published in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, reveals that some cigarette firms are using additives such as plum juice, maple syrup and honey to make their products taste better.
But, according to scientists, the sweeteners increase the smokers' risk of cancer.
The study looked at sweet additives put into cigarettes by five big tobacco firms - British American Tobacco, Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company, Gallaher, and Japan Tobacco International. The details come from the firms' websites.
The researchers say the firms do this because "the addition of sugars in tobacco can enhance tobacco use in at least two ways - neutralisation of the harsh taste of cigarette smoke and generation of acetaldehyde, which increases the addictive effect of nicotine... Moreover, the sweet taste and the agreeable smell of caramelised sugar flavours are appreciated in particular by starting adolescent smokers."
What is that acetaldehyde: from wikepedia: The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has listed acetaldehyde as a Group 1 carcinogen. Acetaldehyde is "one of the most frequently found air toxins with cancer risk greater than one in a million."
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/tobacco-firms-sweetening-cigarettes-to-hook-the-young-418328.html
And
"Dr. James Belluzzi and colleagues at the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center at the University of California at Irvine hypothesized that acetaldehyde might play a role in smoking addiction for several reasons. Among them:
Smokers exhibit more drive to take another puff on a cigarette than laboratory animals do to push a lever for another nicotine infusion, a difference that might be explained if smoke contains an additional reinforcing constituent besides nicotine;
Smokers are abundantly exposed to acetaldehyde, which occurs naturally in tobacco leaves and also is formed as a combustion product of sugars added to tobacco during cigarette manufacture;
Research has suggested that acetaldehyde, which also is produced during alcohol metabolism, contributes to alcohol reinforcement and withdrawal symptoms, raising the possibility that it might play a similar role in tobacco dependence.
"This research underscores the point that nicotine alone may not cause the intensity of dependence seen in smokers, and nicotine replacement does not, by itself, eliminate withdrawal or craving for people trying to quit. Other factors clearly are at play," says Dr. Allison Chausmer of NIDA's Division of Basic Neurosciences and Behavioral Research. "Dr. Belluzzi's experiment strongly suggests that acetaldehyde is one of those factors, and it offers a potential explanation for age-related differences that we observe in epidemiological studies of the impact of tobacco."
https://archives.drugabuse.gov/NIDA_Notes/NNVol20N3/Study.html
Lots of bio chemistry at play here.
Basically they're adding sugar to enhance and insure addiction making it even more difficult for smokers to quit. (Flu like symptoms, etc...) No secret they were adding stuff. But when you think about it---trying to make smoking even more addictive than it was 40-50 years ago...it's pretty pathetic. So, get off the brands that contain additives. If you're going to quit, transition to non-additive first. Get those additives out of your body. At least it's just you going up against the nicotine (plus all the trigger behaviors/emotions with addiction) and not you going up against a cocktail of mind/body altering addictive additives that you are also feeling during quitting, plus nicotine withdrawl.
Good Luck.
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